SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- September 10, 2008 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the ATI RadeonTM HD 4600 series, mainstream graphics offerings that deliver exceptional gaming and HD multimedia performance while consuming less power than a standard light bulb.2 Comprising the ATI Radeon™ HD 4670 and the ATI Radeon™ HD 4650 graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series leverages the leading technology found in the award-winning ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series, including support for the latest DirectX® 10.1 games, superior HD multimedia capabilities and industry leading performance-per-watt3, all delivered at affordable prices for the mainstream graphics segment. The combined features and technologies and incredible prices makes the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series a superb all-around performer, ideal for playing the latest games or driving a high quality home theatre entertainment experience.

The ATI Radeon HD 4670 and ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics cards feature AMD’s TeraScale graphics engine, with 320 stream processing cores, and are based on AMD’s advanced second generation 55nm process. The result is that even in today’s most demanding games like Crysis, the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series delivers up to double the performance of competing products at the same price.1 Both the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and ATI Radeon HD 4650 deliver substantial gaming horsepower with minimal power draw – the ATI Radeon HD 4670 operating at under 60 watts and the ATI Radeon HD 4650 operating under 50 watts under full load – eliminating the need for additional power connectors and making installation a cinch. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 is immediately available with a frame buffer of 512MB GDDR3 memory with an MSRP from USD $79, while a 1GB DDR3-based variant is scheduled to ship later this month. The ATI Radeon HD 4650 features a frame buffer of 512MB GDDR2 memory and is expected to be available later in the month at an MSRP from USD $69.

“Today, AMD is providing mainstream users – one of the largest segments of the market – with superior graphics products and performance at previously unheard of prices,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “The success of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series validates that AMD’s shift away from the traditional means of producing large, hot, monolithic graphics chip continues to be a successful strategy AMD continues to execute against its timelines and deliver leading graphics performance at every price point.

“Mainstream graphics cards – those priced under $100 – represent more than two-thirds of all desktop graphics sold today4,” said Dean McCarron, founder and principal, Mercury Research. Providing competitive solutions in this segment is a mandatory requirement to have a strong position in the graphics market.”

“The ATI Radeon HD 4670 proved to be an excellent performer, especially considering its low-power operation and affordable price,” said Marco Chiappetta, HotHardware.com. “AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 4670 handily outperformed the ATI Radeon HD 3650 and GeForce 9500 GT across a broad range of benchmarks and just missed hitting the mark set by more expensive offerings. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 performed very well in our benchmark testing, which included a number of popular 3D applications and SD and HD video playback tests.”

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Clock speeds are a bit lower and we've go tmuch less memory bandwidth, but the hardware has some advantages. The RV730 XT is a derivative of the GPU in the 4800 series cards, and it carries over some of the benefits we saw inherent in the architecture changes. Of these, antialiasing saw a major benefit, but we also see changes like increases in cache sizes, texturing power, and z/stencil ability. We won't see performance on par with the 3870 in general, but the 4670 will do some damage in certain situations, especially if AA comes into play. (~Anandtech)

Things were pretty tight in our custom Crysis benchmark. Here, less than a single frame per second separated the Radeon HD 4670, Radeon HD 3850, and GeForce 9600 GSO, with the 4670 falling right in between the two. The GeForce 9600 GT was once again the fastest of the single-GPU configurations we tested, and scaling with two Radeon HD 4670 cards in CrossFire mode was quite good. (~HotHardware)

DX10 games like Crysis, Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, and Devil May Cry 4 ran quite well on the 4670. In Crysis the card was just 10% slower than the Radeon HD 3850 at 1600x1200, delivering a playable 40 fps when using the game’s medium settings. In Devil May Cry 4 and Company of Heroes the 4670 narrowed that gap to just 6% at the same resolution with 4xAA. The Radeon 4670 actually outran the Radeon 3850 in our testing with HL2 Episode Two. The only test where the Radeon 3850 consistently pulled ahead of the 4670 by double digit margins was BioShock DX9 with 4xAA.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 9600 GSO is a formidable competitor to the Radeon 4670 however. In our tests the cards traded the performance crown several times, with games like Devil May Cry 4, Episode Two, and Quake Wars running faster on the Radeon 4670, while the 9600 GSO pulled ahead of the ATI card in Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock, Call of Duty 4, and Lost Planet (which uses the same game engine as Devil May Cry) all running faster on the 9600 GSO. World in Conflict and Oblivion were basically a draw. (~FiringsQuad)

In the price sector below €80 AMD might be really successful with the HD 4670. As planned, the HD 4670 and the HD 4650 beat the Geforce 9500 GT - noticeably sometimes. The Radeon scores with the DX 10.1 compatibility, UVD 2.0 for a good HD movie experience without increased CPU workload and the low power consumption.

But nevertheless there are plenty of other fish in the sea and therefore the HD 4670 has to compete with products like the (expiring) Geforce 9600 GSO. If you can and want to expand your budget to €100 card like the HD 3850 and HD 3870 are alternatives for gamers, as long as fps are the matter. But also the Geforce models 9800 GT (8800 GT) or 9600 GT which dropped below €100 only recently, are possibilities. (~PCGamesHardware)

AMD's new HD 4670 has successfully positioned itself in the sub $100 range offering great price/performance, performance/watt and sufficient gaming power for casual gamers. The card which uses a chip that is derived from the RV770 will easily let you play all titles at resolutions up to 1280x1024. If you plan to go beyond that you will have to sacrifice some detail settings. Compared to the previous generation product, the HD 3650, the performance has more than doubled, especially at higher resolutions. AMD has also included all the media PC features that we know from the HD 4800 Series like UVD2, HDMI via adapter, integrated 7.1 audio and HDCP. Together with the low fan noise of the Powercolor heatsink this makes the card an excellent candidate for a media PC which will occasionally be used for some gaming. If you are just looking for a media PC card, the HD 3450 still remains your best choice - or you wait for AMD's upcoming RV710 which will be released later this year.
Compared to NVIDIA's offering in this market segment, the HD 4670 can easily take on the GeForce 9400 GT and 9500 GT. Only the GeForce 9600 GSO and GT are faster for less than 100 dollars. Price/performance wise the HD 4670 is the card of choice if you are looking for the best bang for the buck and don't want to buy the GeForce 9600 GT. (~TechPowerUp)